“Leela, ya all right?” Blue asked, his voice a tremble.
“I don’t know…are you?”
“Somethin’ is different. I feel something…” Blue pressed his body to my neck. “Something inside you.”
My stomach quivered, and I pressed a hand to it, exhaling and standing tall. This was no time for nerves. “We have to focus on finding Mizikiel. Come on.”
I drew my axe and strode down the road toward the spiral. I wasn’t sure how I knew that’s where I’d find him. But I was right. He appeared a moment later, a small figure against the shadow of the gargantuan structure.
He turned to face me as I approached, looking at me through Chandra’s eyes, and gods, the sorrow in their depths almost gave me pause. But no, I couldn’t falter now.
I broke into a jog, then a run, a battle cry climbing up my throat, axes out at my sides.
Blue clung to me. “Get ’im!”
Mizikiel didn’t flinch. Didn’t evade. I swung my blade, a part of me fracturing because this would end Chandra completely. It would end him, and it would end Mizikiel too.
But my blade passed through air. I staggered forward with the momentum.
Whoomp. Whoomp. Whoomp.
The spiral beat, the vibration hitting my body and pushing me back.
“Where’d he go?” Blue scamped across my shoulders. “Get back here, ya coward!”
I spun this way and that, searching for him, but there was nothing but the silence of beginnings and the calm of endings.
“Come out and face me, you murderer!”
“Murderer?” His voice surrounded me, coming from everywhere and nowhere. “You don’t believe that.”
I swallowed past the dryness in my throat. “Yes, I do.”
“You’ve come too far to lie now, Leela. You claimed sovereignty through trials that almost broke you. Do not belittle your efforts with falsehoods now. You know what I am. You know why I do what I do. But if it helps you to believe that it is murder, if it helps you to justify murdering me, then so be it.”
“Don’t listen ta him, Leela,” Blue said. “He’s trying to get into ya head.”
But Mizikiel was right. I was trying to justify it. But no more. I stood tall. “Fine, you’re not a murderer. You’re a keeper of balance. You were fucked over by the Deva and prevented from doing your job. I get it. But you were gone for a long time, and the universe still stands. It hasn’t imploded because one world was allowed to continue to exist. So what the fuck is your excuse for ending it now?”
Silence greeted my question.
Whoomp. Whoomp. Whoomp.
The spiral turned, slow and grinding.
“You see that spiral behind you? It’s a symbol of becoming. Of the complexity of time. Of how we are constantly moving toward future, past, and present. Time is not linear, Leela. What thrives now is also dead and gone. What blooms today is also in decay. Every living thing must have an end.”
“What are you talking about? How does that answer my question?”
“He means our world is already dead,” Blue said softly.
My stomach clenched. “What?”
“Yes, Blue. It was dead when I was imprisoned. It was dead when I was freed. But I made one mistake. I thought it would be my hand that unraveled it. I know now that is not true.”
The air shifted, and I gasped as he materialized right in front of me.
I made to attack, but I couldn’t move. I was frozen. At his mercy. Heart clawing at my ribs like a caged beast.
